Shakespeare has been known to create terrific tales of love and tragedy. Even James Van Der Beek, a well known actor from Dawson's Creek, once commented that, “like all great romantics, Shakespeare realized love was a lot more likely to end with a bunch of dead Danish people than with a kiss”("Americans on the Bard"). This emphasizes how easily people can relate Shakespeare to tragic love. Although he did write many poems and plays with happy endings, his tragedies stand out the most. In these tragedies, people are often led through use of misconception, trickery, or both. An example of misconception can be shown by another of Shakespeare's plays, “Antony and Cleopatra,” as he wrote for Antony's part, “this foul Egyptian hath betrayed me: my fleet hath yielded to the foe; and yonder they cast their caps up and carouse together like friends long lost. Triple-turn'd whore!”(Shakespeare Web). In this quote, Antony is blaming his love, Cleopatra, for betraying him by drawing back the Egyptian fleet, when in reality it was his own soldier, Scarus, that had claimed that the fleet was weak and called them away. Shakespeare's play, “Othello, the Moor of Venice” is no exception to the use of trickery and misconceptions as one of the main characters, Othello, falls from grace through a series of tragic events.
The first event that heads Othello to the path of tragedy and destruction is when he first shows signs of distress and regret over an unproven testimony. This occurs after Iago states:
I speak not yet of proof. Look to your wife. Observe her well with Cassio. Wear your eye thus, not jealous nor secure. I would not have your free and noble nature out of self-bounty be abused. Look to 't. I know our country disposition well. In Ve...
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...m to others. According to Thomas Alva Edison, “ah, Shakespeare!...He would have been an inventor, a wonderful inventor, if he had turned his mind to it. He seemed to see the inside of everything” ("Americans on the Bard"), recognizing Shakespeare as an intelligent writer with an ability to observe the reality of people rather than false pretenses that are often in place.
Works Cited
"Americans on the Bard." "Speaking of Shakespeare". N.p.. Web. 2 Dec 2013. .
Shakespeare, William. "Antony and Cleopatra Act 4 Scene 12." The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. N.p.. Web. 2 Dec 2013..
Shakespeare, William. "Othello, The Moor of Venice." Perrine's literature: structure, sound, & sense. (11th Ed.). Boston: Wadsworth, 1276-1371.
Othello, a play written by William Shakespeare in approximately 1603, focuses on two opposite characters named Othello and Iago. Othello is a respectable army general who tragically dies in the end. The readers believe that his flaw is jealousy, which ruins his calm and makes him believe Iago, a character nobody should trust. The antagonist of the play, Iago, is a cunning liar who lies and tricks almost every other characters in the play to ruin and manipulate Othello. The play starts on the street of Venice where Iago convinces Roderigo to plot against Othello by planning falsely accuse Othello’s wife, Desdemona, of cheating. Interestingly, another specific detail critics usually look at is that Shakespeare choose to make the character of Othello a dark-skinned man, which was not a common feature a hero should have during the Elizabethan. Some of the common themes in Othello are the role of race and racism, the effects of jealousy, and the differences between genders during the Elizabethan.
Othello as A Tragedy of Outsiders The most obvious way of being an outsider in Othello is through being a foreigner, and a non-Venetian. Othello and Cassio are both outsiders in this sense, Othello is a black man, a "Moor", and Cassio is a "Florentine". Othello begins in Venice, in Shakespeare's time the great commercial centre of the western world. Venice was the place of great hustle and bustle, merchants and tradesmen from other lands were commonplace, and yet we see throughout the play how Othello and Cassio are ridiculed. Cassio is degraded as he is from Florence; Iago calls him "a great arithmetician".
Heilman, Robert B. “Wit and Witchcraft: an Approach to Othello.” Shakespeare: Modern Essays in Criticism. Ed. Leonard F. Dean. Rev. Ed. Rpt. from The Sewanee Review, LXIV, 1 (Winter 1956), 1-4, 8-10; and Arizona Quarterly (Spring 1956), pp.5-16.
The love of the protagonist and his wife in William Shakespeare’s trgedy Othello can not stand up against the repeated assaults of the sinister Iago. Let us in this essay search for and comment on the examples of love found in the play.
The initial call into the hero’s journey begins when he decides to take Desdemona’s hand in marriage. Desdemona’s father (Branbantio) who is the senator begins Othello’s ticking time bomb known as the “Call to Action” by planting a seed into his mind which causes more destruction then we realized. Branbantio tells Othello “Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see. She has deceived her
How Othello Follows the Rules of Tragedy Tragedy is not just simply one sad event, in ancient Greek plays and in Shakespeare's tragedies it usually follows a number of common ingredients or rules. Firstly it involves a conspicuous or exceptional personality. For example in the occurrence of Princess Diana's death she was the exceptional character. She was a woman who had done an astonishing amount of work for charities and a Princess. The second rule of tragedy is that it must be unexpected and constructed with previous happiness or glory.
Right from the opening scene, Othello presents an aura of evil and disloyalty. The play begin...
The play “Othello” by William Shakespeare was written in 1604 during the Elizabeth era. Othello is one of the most extraordinary characters in all of Shakespeare’s dramas. He enjoyed unheralded success in the combat zone, which gave him the reputation as one of Venice’s most competent generals. Even though he has great success in the battlefield, he has a dramatic flaw that causes a downfall in his life. The dramatic flaw that causes his downfall is jealousy. This was brought on by a simple persuasion of Iago, the evil character in the play. Even though Iago used extreme manipulation to get Othello to be jealous, Iago did not really have to try very hard to get Othello in a jealous state of mind. Othello was blinded by his jealousy which led him down a path of constant questioning of his wife and his friend Cassio. Throughout the play we see his dramatic flaw sink him deeper and deeper into a cloud of doubt which eventually leads him to kill not only his love of his life but also himself.
Tragedy is an intrinsically human concept; tragic heroes are damned by what they themselves do. Othello is not so much felled by the actions of Iago, but by a quality all people possess-- human frailty. Accordingly, Othello is not a victim of consequences, but an active participant in his downfall. He is not merely a vehicle for the machinations of Iago; he had free agency. Othello's deficiencies are: an insecure grasp of Venetian social values; lack of critical intelligence, self-knowledge, and faith in his wife; and finally, insecurity-- these are the qualities that lead to his own downfall.
His soon-to-be-lieutenant, Iago, whispers in his ear about his wife, Desdemona, and the unforgivable crime of adultery, throwing Othello’s orderly world to the winds of fate. Still, if the starting point and destination of Othello’s initial journey were to be compared to Othello’s psychological journey throughout the play (and, more importantly, the development of his relationship with the villain, Iago), they are found to be startlingly similar. Whether Shakespeare intended the parallel or not, and there isn’t really any sure way to tell, the coincidence is great. Venice, where the story starts, is a place of order, rich and wonderful. Likewise, Othello’s relationship with Iago is shown by the third scene of Act One to be, on the surface, based on honesty, respect, and admiration.
The Tragedy of Othello William Shakespeare’s, The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice, from the sixteenth century is an excellent example of Renaissance humanism. “A poet of unparalleled genius, Shakespeare emerged during the golden age of England under the rule of Elizabeth I.”(Fiero 3:98) He produced comedies, tragedies, romances and histories. According to Webster’s pocket dictionary, a tragedy is defined as a form of drama in which the protagonist comes to a disaster, as through a flaw in character, and in which the ending is usually marked by pity or sorrow. I would like to concentrate on the character Iago and the theme of deceit.
Of Shakespeare’s five greatest tragedies, Othello is by far the most passionate and gripping. It is a tale of love, deception, evil, honesty, and virtue. Othello himself is set apart from other Shakespearean tragic heroes by the absolute feeling of affection the audience feels for him even unto the very end of the play. Any discerning reader painfully recognizes the virtue and goodness of Othello throughout the entire play, in contrast to the general degeneration of character so typical of a tragic hero. It is this complete pity that makes the death of Othello so tragic as the audience lends their full hopeful support until the inevitable and unavoidable fall. The evil side of Othello’s tragic flaw came from without, in the form of Iago. The internal flaw exists only in his heartrendingly unshakable goodness and honor.
The first trait that led to Othello’s downfall was his easily manipulated conscience. Throughout the drama Othello let Iago control him as if he was a puppet under his master’s hands. When Iago first brought up the idea that Desdemona
In conclusion Othello’s jealousy is the one flaw that brings him down the most as he had succumbed to the pernicious influence of revenge which was embodied by the character Iago. If Iago hadn’t been so manipulating and Othello so naïve, the event which resulted in the downfall of Othello could have been avoided; so I believe the reason for his downfall ultimately lies with weaknesses of his character.
Tragic heroes tend to have very pre-determined paths; usually making the most virtuous of characters destined to suffer. The hamartia or ‘tragic flaw’ is the typical reason the hero falls. Shakespeare was noted to be one of the best writers of tragedies, one of his most prominent to be Othello. In Othello, we find a number of tragic flaws two including pride and ambition. In William Shakespeare’s play, Othello, pride and ambition are used to identify the outcomes for the main characters in the play when seeing the resolution of the play, perceiving those who survive and those who don’t, and considering each character’s role in the turn of events.